It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

Thanksgiving and our annual After Thanksgiving Party really cut into my reading and any reviewing I thought I was going to do this week. To be honest, the majority of my reading this week was of recipes, not books. But aside from Christmas shopping, my life should be back to my usual reading saturation again now. And I wouldn't have it any other way! This meme is hosted by Kathryn at Reading Date.

Books I completed this past week are:

The Perfect Comeback of Caroline Jacobs by Matthew Dicks
The Black Velvet Coat by Jill G. Hall
Pretending to Dance by Diane Chamberlain

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

The Resurrectionist by Jack O'Connell
The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford
The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Muralist by B.A. Shapiro
A Walk Across America by Peter Jenkins

Reviews posted this week:

The Black Velvet Coat by Jill G. Hall

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

Migratory Animals by Mary Helen Specht
Balm by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
Secrets of a Charmed Life by Susan Meissner
Girl in Glass by Deanna Fei
Orphan Number Eight by Kim van Alkemade
Make Your Home Among Strangers by Jennine Capo Crucet
The Seven Stages of Anger and Other Stories by Wendy J. Fox
The Door by Magda Szabo
Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper
Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg
Landfall by Ellen Urbani
This Must Be the Place by Kate Racculia
Henna House by Nomi Eve
The Coincidence of Coconut Cake by Amy Reichert
Bread Alone by Judith Ryan Hendricks
Fishbowl by Bradley Somer
The Woman in the Photograph by Dana Gynther
Beneath the Bonfire by Nickolas Butler
The Baker's Apprentice by Judith Ryan Hendricks
X Marks the Scot by Victoria Roberts
Miss Dreamsville and the Lost Heiress of Collier County by Amy Hill Hearth
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller
The Bees by Laline Paull
A Peach of a Pair by Kim Boykin
Welcome to Braggsville by T. Geronimo Johnson
Wonder by R. J. Palacio
The Sea Keeper's Daughter by Lisa Wingate
My Unsentimental Education by Debra Monroe
Minerva by M.C. Beaton
What Is Visible by Kimberly Elkins
Katherine Carlyle by Rupert Thomson
Two Dogs and a Parrot by Joan Chittister
The Last Season by Stuart Stevens
Mrs. Sinclair's Suitcase by Louise Walters
Forever Your Earl by Eva Leigh
Speed Kings by Andy Bull
Slightly Foxed, The Real Reader's Quarterly #46 edited by Gail Pirkis and Hazel Wood
We That Are Left by Clare Clark
Famous Baby by Karen Rizzo
Dear Mr. You by Mary-Louise Parker
Making Babies by Anne Enright
The Perfect Comeback of Caroline Jacobs by Matthew Dicks
Pretending to Dance by Diane Chamberlain

Monday Mailbox

One at the beginning of the week and one at the very end, this pair shows just how widely ranging my reading roams. This past week's mailbox arrivals:

The Black Velvet Coat by Jill G. Hall came from She Writes Press and BookSparks PR for a blog tour.

I've already reviewed this one here.

The Santa Claus Man by Alex Palmer came from Lyons Press and TLC Book Tours for a blog tour.

A con involving the man who started The Santa Claus Association, the group that answered children's Christmas Letters? How very enticing, especially at this time of year.

If you want to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

Waiting on Wednesday

This meme is hosted by Breaking the Spine and is meant to highlight some great pre-publication books we all can't wait to get our grubby little mitts on.

The Song of Hartgrove Hall by Natasha Solomons. The book is being released by Plume on December 29, 2015.

Amazon says this about the book: Natasha Solomons’s breathtaking new novel has it all: a love triangle, family obligations, and rediscovering joy in the face of grief, all set against the alluring backdrop of an English country estate perfect for fans of Downton Abbey

It's a terrible thing to covet your brother’s girl

New Year’s Eve, Dorset, England, 1946. Candles flicker, a gramophone scratches out a tune as guests dance and sip champagne— for one night Hartgrove Hall relives better days. Harry Fox-Talbot and his brothers have returned from World War II determined to save their once grand home from ruin. But the arrival of beautiful Jewish wartime singer Edie Rose tangles the threads of love and duty, and leads to a devastating betrayal.

Fifty years later, now a celebrated composer, Fox reels from the death of his adored wife, Edie. Until his connection with his four-year old grandson - a music prodigy – propels him back into life, and ultimately to confront his past. An enthralling novel about love and treachery, joy after grief, and a man forced to ask: is it ever too late to seek forgiveness?

Review: The Black Velvet Coat by Jill G. Hall

You can never predict what seemingly ordinary item will catch your fancy and not let it go. Muse and inspiration are a mystery and as individual as snow flakes. But once something has captured your imagination, following it where it leads can make surprising connections or even change the trajectory of your life. In Jill G. Hall's debut novel, The Black Velvet Coat, muse and inspiration do both.

Anne McFarland is a struggling artist in San Francisco when she sees a black velvet coat in the front window of a thrift shop. Inexplicably she spends some of the very little money she has, money she'd earmarked for her rent, on the coat and the lovely sparkling snowflake pin pinned to it. Throwing on the beautiful garment, she heads off to her job as a hotel valet, one of the small jobs she's taken to try and keep her head above water while she waits for her big break in the art world. When she stumbles across a 1960s era picture of a local heiress wearing what appears to be the same coat and pin, Anne is captivated and determined to uncover Sylvia Van Dam's story. In the picture, Sylvia is leaving her engagement party with her debonair fiance but there's something about the expression in her eyes, an unhappiness, that draws Anne to her story and she starts working on a collage series that could very well be the best thing she's ever produced.

Alternating with Anne's story is Sylvia's story and what's behind the look in her eyes. Orphaned at a young age, Sylvia is a shy and unassuming young woman. Even before her parents died, she never felt she measured up to expectations and her lack of confidence in herself is heartbreaking. When she meets the flashy and charismatic Ricardo, she is entranced, falling for him quickly and ignoring the warnings all of her nearest and dearest give her about his character. When those warnings turn out to be based in truth, catastrophe strikes and Sylvia runs from the consequences.

The novel starts with Sylvia on the run from a crime the reader knows was committed but doesn't yet understand. And its genesis will only become clear over the course of the novel. The chapters alternate between Anne in the present day and Sylvia in the 1960s. As Anne uncovers more about Sylvia's life through newspaper accounts of the time, the chapters centered on Sylvia flesh out this minimal information that Anne has read. And it is the mystery of this seemingly glamorous woman that inspires Anne in her work. Anne is still struggling, suffering from her own insecurities based on rejections from an uninspired and tradition bound gallery owner and the opinions of people who are, in truth, really only tangential to her world. She needs to learn to find an inherent internal value to herself and her art. In fact, her character is an odd combination of neediness and courage and the two didn't always mesh. Sylvia too needs to stop viewing herself through the eyes of others and recognize her own value. She is deserving of being loved, something that she only comes to appreciate in her flight and through the kindness of strangers. There are several romantic relationships in the novel, for both Anne and Sylvia, and they are rather flat and one dimensional feeling. The Sylvia story line felt much more historical than the 1960s; it almost had a Roaring Twenties air about it. The two different stories, Sylvia's disappearance and Anne's conflictedness about her life choices, were both compelling though and wondering how they'd come together keeps the reader turning the pages. The conclusion of the novel was too fast and a bit unfinished, especially given all the detail given in the beginning and middle of the novel. Full of issues like inspiration and its source, believing in yourself and creating your own happiness, learning courage, a reminder to look beneath the facade to find reality, and the grace of giving to others, over all, this was a fast and pleasurable read.

Thanks to the publisher and Book Sparks PR for sending me a copy of this book to review.

It''s Monday! What Are You Reading?

This meme is hosted by Kathryn at Reading Date.

Books I completed this past week are:

not one thing   :-(

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

The Resurrectionist by Jack O'Connell
The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford
The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Muralist by B.A. Shapiro
The Perfect Comeback of Caroline Jacobs by Matthew Dicks

Reviews posted this week:

Whistling Women by Kelly Romo
Be Safe I Love You by Cara Hoffman

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

Migratory Animals by Mary Helen Specht
Balm by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
Secrets of a Charmed Life by Susan Meissner
Girl in Glass by Deanna Fei
Orphan Number Eight by Kim van Alkemade
Make Your Home Among Strangers by Jennine Capo Crucet
The Seven Stages of Anger and Other Stories by Wendy J. Fox
The Door by Magda Szabo
Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper
Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg
Landfall by Ellen Urbani
This Must Be the Place by Kate Racculia
Henna House by Nomi Eve
The Coincidence of Coconut Cake by Amy Reichert
Bread Alone by Judith Ryan Hendricks
Fishbowl by Bradley Somer
The Woman in the Photograph by Dana Gynther
Beneath the Bonfire by Nickolas Butler
The Baker's Apprentice by Judith Ryan Hendricks
X Marks the Scot by Victoria Roberts
Miss Dreamsville and the Lost Heiress of Collier County by Amy Hill Hearth
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller
The Bees by Laline Paull
A Peach of a Pair by Kim Boykin
Welcome to Braggsville by T. Geronimo Johnson
Wonder by R. J. Palacio
The Sea Keeper's Daughter by Lisa Wingate
My Unsentimental Education by Debra Monroe
Minerva by M.C. Beaton
What Is Visible by Kimberly Elkins
Katherine Carlyle by Rupert Thomson
Two Dogs and a Parrot by Joan Chittister
The Last Season by Stuart Stevens
Mrs. Sinclair's Suitcase by Louise Walters
Forever Your Earl by Eva Leigh
Speed Kings by Andy Bull
Slightly Foxed, The Real Reader's Quarterly #46 edited by Gail Pirkis and Hazel Wood
We That Are Left by Clare Clark
Famous Baby by Karen Rizzo
Dear Mr. You by Mary-Louise Parker
Making Babies by Anne Enright

Sunday Salon: Speeding towards the holidays

I haven't read much at all this week. Pick your jaws up off the floor; it's still me. I've just been busy and tired and tired and busy. The middle school musical, my baby's last musical performance was this week, with shows from Wednesday until Saturday. He was Ed the Dumb Hyena and he was outstanding in the role, if I do say so as a completely unbiased observer. We haven't stopped teasing him that none of his lines contained words and that it was the easiest casting choice ever. Good thing he can take a joke! In addition to helping with the make-up for several of the shows, I also had two interesting book related events this past week. The first was a panel on the topic of "I'm Published. Now What? Making Money With Your Writing." It was quite different than I expected it to be and much broader in scope than I imaged but it was both interesting and informative. Then I had dinner and went to an author event with B.A. Shapiro, who is touring for her newest novel, The Muralist. Barbara was a delight and if you have a chance to see her on her book tour, you absolutely should.  Once I was through all of that, I had a moment to breathe and realize that the holidays are coming at an alarming clip. I have most of the fixings for our Thanksgiving meal but we also host an After Thanksgiving Party where people in town for the holiday and their house guests come over and get a break from each other. Sometimes 3 or 4 days is just too long to look at the same people over the dinner table, you know? I've finalized the all-appetizer menu and pushed send on the invitations so there's no backing out of it now! Even R. has asked if she can invite a friend to the party. I pick W. up from college on Tuesday and bring him home. I was reduced to sending him a text threatening to leave him at school to have turkey and mashed potatoes there if he didn't text or call me. It'll be so nice to have him home, ignoring us in the same zip code instead of from a distance! I've already started looking for Christmas presents, especially for the particularly hard to buy for (all males in the family, I'm looking at you!). If I make it through this next week of constant cooking and cleaning and entertaining, I will likely hole up with my books for the foreseeable future to try and recover. Either that or you'll find me in the fetal position sucking my thumb. ;-)

For this week's reading travels, I will cut and paste this from last week: "I am still at the medical clinic with a father hoping to have his son "resurrected." I am also still entrenched in upper class Britain between the wars with a family modeled after the Mitfords."  I also added a couple: I am in Christie's looking through a box of paintings that are possibly from the WPA era and potentially early works of very famous artists and I just dropped the f-bomb at a PTA meeting, which is completely unlike me and appears to herald a new me. Where have your reading travels taken you this week?

Waiting on Wednesday

This meme is hosted by Breaking the Spine and is meant to highlight some great pre-publication books we all can't wait to get our grubby little mitts on.

A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding by Jackie Copleton. The book is being released by Penguin Books on December 1, 2015.

Amazon says this about the book: In the tradition of Memoirs of a Geisha and The Piano Teacher, a heart-wrenching debut novel of family, forgiveness, and the exquisite pain of love

When Amaterasu Takahashi opens the door of her Philadelphia home to a badly scarred man claiming to be her grandson, she doesn’t believe him. Her grandson and her daughter, Yuko, perished nearly forty years ago during the bombing of Nagasaki. But the man carries with him a collection of sealed private letters that open a Pandora’s Box of family secrets Ama had sworn to leave behind when she fled Japan. She is forced to confront her memories of the years before the war: of the daughter she tried too hard to protect and the love affair that would drive them apart, and even further back, to the long, sake-pouring nights at a hostess bar where Ama first learned that a soft heart was a dangerous thing. Will Ama allow herself to believe in a miracle?

Review: Be Safe I Love You by Cara Hoffman

We ask those in the military to leave their homes and families and go all over the world to ensure our safety. People choose to accept this request for any number of reasons but whatever the motivation is, it's not an easy thing we ask of them. And unacknowledged or unknown by the civilian population, it's also not an easy thing for these soldiers to come home again, to re-immerse themselves in everyday life, to leave the things that they saw, troubling or disturbing or horrifying, behind them. It is a combination of what happens out there in the field, what those serving internalize and bring home, and the ways in which regular society fails our returned military in terms of mental health and support that keeps so many of the people who put their own lives on the line for us every day in the news in such negative ways. PTSD is very real and it is a terrible thing. The percentage of returned soldiers who commit suicide is staggering. If we are going to ask people to witness the terrible things that they see and to risk themselves every day, until we can solve war, we owe it to them to find a way to help them live productive lives after their tours of duty are finished. In Cara Hoffman's latest novel, Be Safe I Love You, readers follow Lauren Clay, a young woman just back from Iraq and suffering from PTSD as she looks with changed eyes on her family, friends, and the town in which they live.

Lauren Clay comes home from a tour in Iraq to no fanfare. She wanted to surprise everyone she loves so she didn't tell them she was coming. She's especially eager to see her younger brother Danny, for whom she was the caretaker for so many years after their mother abandoned them and their father sank into a deep depression. A naturally gifted singer, Lauren gave up a chance at further training in order to enlist to ensure Danny a better, more secure life than the one she lived. When she comes back into town, she is somehow different in ways that no one can quite explain. Thinking that she just needs time to readjust, no one worries or wonders about the pent up anger she is clearly carrying. The town is full of military and former military so they understand that reentry will be a prolonged and personal experience for her as she comes to terms with all the changes that her five years gone have wrought. But ex-boyfriend Shane, best friend Holly, voice teacher Troy, her father, and her 13 year old brother all overlook, or maybe just don't want to acknowledge, the fact that Lauren isn't okay and she carries deeper, darker scars than they can even imagine. In fact, she is spiraling out of control, hallucinating and confusing reality with memories and stories, and she needs help.

When Lauren comes back to the US, she's been fast tracked through her out processing because she doesn't show any signs of being at risk. She has plans for the future and a family waiting for her. But what she discovers at home bears little resemblance to what she left when she enlisted. Her brother is a typical teenager. He spends hours on his phone and his computer. The mother who abandoned them as children is interested in their lives and willing to be present for both Danny and Lauren if they want.  Ex-boyfriend Shane went off to college and his world perspective no longer matches Lauren's.  And the biggest change of all, her father is no longer depressed. When she discovers that it only took a couple of months on anti-depressants to regulate him and pull him out of bed after she left, she is angry and bitter that he didn't solve this problem before. But his re-emergence also serves to strip her of the caretaker role she fully expected to reassume when she came home. Having her expectations collapse, even for a good reason, leaves her floundering to define her new role. And it is in this life of uncertainty, one that she can't quite believe is safe, that Lauren starts to exhibit more and more signs of PTSD.

Lauren as a character is frozen and remote from everyone, including the reader. She does show flashes of fire when her anger erupts occasionally, when she cannot keep it tamped down in the place where her memories from Iraq are stored. She works so hard to keep that fire contained, not letting it melt and consume the stark, white blankness inside of her, because she doesn't want to remember the terrible things she did or the tragedy she saw. Running off to the Jeanne d'Arc Basin in the middle of winter, on her way to meet up with Daryl, the fellow soldier and close friend with whom she made future plans, accurately reflects her inner mental state. She is a character who needs the reader's sympathy but whose inexplicable rage towards those she cares about tests that sympathy time and again. There are a couple of secondary plot lines that don't add much to the story and seem either out of place or just filler doing nothing to illuminate the main story line, including Lauren's best friend Holly's relationship with Patrick; Troy, Lauren's voice teacher's oft repeated locally accepted lack of intelligence; and ex-boyfriend Shane's discussion with his current girlfriend about Lauren. And there were pieces missing from the story. What Lauren experienced and saw in Iraq had such a horrific effect on her but the telling of that story is saved for the end of the novel where it is not really explored in depth at all. The epilogue is promising but too easy, leaving out all the hard work of getting to that place mentally and emotionally. But the book as a whole is an important one, shining a light on PTSD, and PTSD in a female soldier at that. It feels like a very real, very raw situation and doesn't allow the reader to turn away from the results of soldiering that don't show on the surface but that lurk deep in the psyche. Emotional wounds are no less vital to treat than the physical ones and Hoffman has made that incredibly clear in the heartbreaking and broken character of Lauren.

Review: Whistling Women by Kelly Romo

How do you repair a family relationship, one broken by terrible actions? What does it take to earn forgiveness and to whom is it owed? Addie Bates is thirty and she's been running from her past for fifteen years. Something so terrible happened in her past that she left her home and her older sister, ending up living in the Sleepy Valley Nudist Colony and having no contact with her family for fully half of her life but always mourning that loss. When the colony agrees to exhibit themselves and their way of life at the 1935 World's Fair, she is forced to return to San Diego where her young life first seemed like it was finally going to go well and then went so terribly, terribly wrong.

Addie and sister Wavey lost their parents at a young age. The older Wavey was taken in by their aunt and uncle but Addie, too young to help on the farm, was sent to an orphanage. When Wavey married, she and her husband sent for Addie to come and live with them and help with the baby that Wavey was expecting. Addie was thrilled to leave the orphanage and join her adored sister and new brother-in-law, Ty, but she soon discovers that life under the abusive and predatory Ty's roof is more nightmare than dream. Only her love for her sister and baby Mary brighten her days. When she makes a spur of the moment decision in defense of her sister, both their lives are shattered and Addie must flee. She's been aching for Wavey's forgiveness ever since. As she is aging and coming up on a time when her naked body is no longer a visual commodity for the colony, her future there is limited and uncertain. So Addie thinks that she will try to reconnect with her sister, in person this time, rather than simply sending more letters like those that have been marked return to sender throughout the years. If Wavey can forgive her, maybe Addie will have a future outside the colony after all. But reconciliation won't be easy and even after fifteen years as a nudist Addie is still learning to be comfortable in her own skin, to accept herself as she is, and to forgive herself. The question is whether Wavey can and will do the same.

Instead of Wavey, when Addie first goes to her sister's home, she encounters Mary, all grown-up, and another niece she didn't know about, Rumor. Once Rumor uncovers who the woman outside their house is, she is dogged in her determination to meet her aunt, despite her misgivings knowing that Addie is a nudist. The colony and those in it are considered an abomination and scandal by decent folk in San Diego and it will be a challenge for Rumor to see and talk to Addie as a result. Addie's re-appearance and Rumor's persistence in making a connection will bring all of the family secrets to the surface, will force Wavey and Addie to acknowledge the horror of the past, and will make them look the present squarely in the face. The truth will challenge what Mary and Rumor know about themselves and their family and is the only thing that can start to repair the damage done in so many lives fifteen years ago.

The narration is third person limited alternating from Addie's and Rumor's points of view. The chapters centered on Addie move backwards and forwards in time, giving the reader both flashes from the past, ultimately leading up to what caused the sisters to fall out and Addie to leave San Diego, and her present day situation in the fairgrounds nudist colony exhibit. Rumor's chapters are all from her present and clearly show her to be a rebellious and inquisitive teenager. The plot is set up to reveal the mystery of what happened in Wavey and Addie's past very slowly. In fact, the mystery is not really much of a mystery, easily guessed although circumstances around it are more complicated than the reader perhaps initially expects. As the two foci, Addie and Rumor are the best fleshed out characters and all others are seen through their eyes. Addie's character is engaging and sympathetic; it is clear she has suffered. Rumor is curious and loyal but can be as immature as would be expected of her age. Mary is a bit of a milk sop character; even though she's the older, she is definitely less adventurous and open-minded than her sister. Wavey is a strange dichotomy of a character. She's a neglectful mother at times, going out dancing and drinking nightly and spending days hungover and sleeping, and fiercely protective at other times. There is a large supporting cast of characters here and although they, with a few exceptions, are truly secondary, they are surprisingly three dimensional, not all good nor all bad. The story is one that starts off with a dark, hinted at secret but it grows even darker with rape, domestic abuse, violence, murder, and pedophilia all contained within it. The pacing is uneven, with the beginning drawn out slowly followed suddenly by major revelation after major revelation all coming on top of each other in the last quarter of the book. Even with this imbalance, the reader will push on, wanting to see how the need to protect those we love from harm plays out between both Addie and Wavey and Wavey and her daughters. It is a tale of estrangement, secrets, lives derailed, and the bonds between sisters. Those who like historical fiction will be fascinated by the setting and time of this novel and fans of family dynamics stories will find much to engage them as well.

For more information about Kelly Romo and the book, take a look at her web site, her Facebook page, or follow her on Twitter. Check out the book's Good Reads page, follow the rest of the blog tour, or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

Thanks to Lisa from TLC Book Tours and the publisher for sending me a copy of the book for review.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This meme is hosted by Kathryn at Reading Date.

Books I completed this past week are:

Be Safe I Love You by Cara Hoffman
Making Babies by Anne Enright
Whistling Women by Kelly Romo

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

The Resurrectionist by Jack O'Connell
The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford

Reviews posted this week:

Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher
Beautiful Affliction by Lene Fogelberg
Dietland by Sarai Walker
On the Rocks by Erin Duffy
Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt
Come, Tell Me How You Live by Agatha Christie Mallowan
All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

Migratory Animals by Mary Helen Specht
Balm by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
Secrets of a Charmed Life by Susan Meissner
Girl in Glass by Deanna Fei
Orphan Number Eight by Kim van Alkemade
Make Your Home Among Strangers by Jennine Capo Crucet
The Seven Stages of Anger and Other Stories by Wendy J. Fox
The Door by Magda Szabo
Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper
Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg
Landfall by Ellen Urbani
This Must Be the Place by Kate Racculia
Henna House by Nomi Eve
The Coincidence of Coconut Cake by Amy Reichert
Bread Alone by Judith Ryan Hendricks
Fishbowl by Bradley Somer
The Woman in the Photograph by Dana Gynther
Beneath the Bonfire by Nickolas Butler
The Baker's Apprentice by Judith Ryan Hendricks
X Marks the Scot by Victoria Roberts
Miss Dreamsville and the Lost Heiress of Collier County by Amy Hill Hearth
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller
The Bees by Laline Paull
A Peach of a Pair by Kim Boykin
Welcome to Braggsville by T. Geronimo Johnson
Wonder by R. J. Palacio
The Sea Keeper's Daughter by Lisa Wingate
My Unsentimental Education by Debra Monroe
Minerva by M.C. Beaton
What Is Visible by Kimberly Elkins
Katherine Carlyle by Rupert Thomson
Two Dogs and a Parrot by Joan Chittister
The Last Season by Stuart Stevens
Mrs. Sinclair's Suitcase by Louise Walters
Forever Your Earl by Eva Leigh
Speed Kings by Andy Bull
Slightly Foxed, The Real Reader's Quarterly #46 edited by Gail Pirkis and Hazel Wood
We That Are Left by Clare Clark
Famous Baby by Karen Rizzo
Dear Mr. You by Mary-Louise Parker
Making Babies by Anne Enright

Monday Mailbox

Just one this week but one that will hopefully continue to inspire me to "move more." This past week's mailbox arrivals:

Living With a SEAL by Jesse Itzler came from FSB Associates in a Facebook contest win.

I am trying to get in shape again myself but I can't begin to imagine inviting the "toughest man on the planet" to live with me and oversee my training. I might not want to live it but I am, however, completely taken by the idea of reading about it.

If you want to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

Sunday Salon: The Week In Short

Brief flashes of my week: Killer exercise class. Field trip chaperone. Fitness trainer. Writing reviews. Restless reading. Tennis. Sunny Savannah. College trip with my daughter. Visiting my parents. Heading home hours in the car.

My reading travels this week took me to upstate New York with a female soldier who returned from Iraq invisibly broken. I also ruminated on having babies and how that changes life. I am still at the medical clinic with a father hoping to have his son "resurrected." I am also still entrenched in upper class Britain between the wars with a family modeled after the Mitfords. And I am in the 1930s bouncing between two sisters, one a nudist and one a divorced mom, who have a terribly betrayal between them but who are about to reconnect after many years. Where did your reading travels take you this past week?

Review: All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews

Sisters have a strange bond. They fight like cats and dogs but they love each other right down to the marrow of their beings. They can frustrate each other, annoy each other, even dislike each other at times, but they are still connected in inexplicable ways. Often they find their roles in the family and they hew to those roles forever after. In Miriam Toews' latest novel, All My Puny Sorrows, there are two sisters caught in their self-defined roles as one of them actively seeks to leave this world and the other struggles to keep her sister in it.

Elfrieda (Elf) is a world-renowned concert pianist. She is happily married to a wonderful, thoughtful, and loving man. She's successful beyond all imagining. And yet she is deeply depressed, attempting suicide regularly. Yolandi (Yoli) appears to be the diametric opposite of her older sister. Given half a chance, she consistently bollockses up her life and needs to be bailed out by her sister. Despite her chronic money problems, the difficulties of single parenting, and multiple failed relationships behind her, she is generally pretty happy. Or she would be if her beloved sister wasn't so determined to kill herself. Not only does Elf want to die but she wants Yoli to help her, concocting schemes for them to go overseas together where Elf can get enough of certain drugs to finally succeed in dying. What does Yoli owe Elf though? Does she owe it to her sister to help her or does she owe it to her to try and keep her safe? Yoli wants to be the loyal, unquestioning, and adoring sister she's always been but this leaves her torn about the right thing to do.

Elf is not the first in her family to contemplate suicide. In fact, Elf and Yoli's father committed suicide himself. His quiet beliefs in writing and reading put him at constant odds with their Mennonite community, as does his unwavering support for Elf in her forbidden love of piano, poetry, and her unconventional personality. This longstanding history of the two sisters, as well as past persecutions in Russia, weaves in throughout the more present narrative where Elf is in a psychiatric hospital instead of preparing for her upcoming concert tour. The story is entirely from Yoli's first person perspective as the unsuccessful sister and Elf is only envisioned through her eyes.  This persepctive makes it that much more shocking for the reader when Elf admits to Yoli that she has spent a lifetime being the responsible one in order to give Yoli the space and freedom to screw-up. And because we see Elf's despair through the lens of Yoli, there seems to be no definable reason for her crippling depression. Yoli doesn't understand quite the ways in which performing both saves and drains Elf, nor the way the pressure to fulfill her familial role overwhelms her. Instead she is left to wonder whether her sister has the right to die if she is seemingly healthy and only suffering mentally. Is this a mental illness deep within her bones that plagues Elf and if so can she be judged sane in her desire to die?

The narration feels akin to but not exactly stream of consciousness and is very much one sided. There is little action involved; the story relies almost entirely on character development to keep the reader turning pages. Elf as a character is sneaky and determined, non-compliant with her doctors' orders, only wanting to be loosed from the hospital in order to accomplish her ultimate goal. Yoli's character is conflicted and at least somewhat sympathetic as she weighs her own needs and wants as versus her sister's. The story is roughly based on Toews' own family situation and there is a poignancy about it and a truthfulness to both the grief of living in fear for a depressed loved one and the scary inability to truly save someone who has no interest in being saved. As a novel centered on suicide and the desire to die, there is a lot of bleakness and depression, of course, but there's also humor strewn throughout the story that leavens the certain despair, sadness, and sorrow at moments when it threatens to overwhelm the reader. The writing is serious, intimate, and meticulously chosen; it's very well-written. The story as a whole though is somewhat ponderous and the pacing is slow and deliberate. As a look at the toll depression takes on not only the sufferer but those who love her, this is masterful but as an engaging story, it just doesn't quite reach the same level.

Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy of the book to review.

Review: Come, Tell Me How You Live by Agatha Christie Mallowan

Have you ever heard what a person did for a living and wondered what it was really like? In this case, it wasn't famed archaeologist Max Mallowan who answers this question but his famous wife, Agatha Christie, the revered mystery writer, who set out to answer the question she often got at dinner parties about what she did on her husband's archaeological expeditions. Who better to write this happily enchanting and engaging memoir of several seasons in Syria excavating promising tells (man made mounds indicating the presence of past settlements), uncovering the mysteries of the past than the Grande Dame of Mystery herself?

Agatha Christie Mallowan was funny. She was observant. She was self-deprecating. And she's eminently readable. Undertaken to explain Christie Mallowan's life and experiences in the Middle East, the memoir, firmly grounded in the pre-WWII time period, was started and then put aside, only being finished at the close of the war, after the world she was chronicling was already slipping into memory. From detailing her preparations to leave England, such things as the necessity of vast quantities of pens and watches and shoes (the latter being Christie Mallowan's desire), the difficulty of finding appropriate clothing in a large enough size, and trying to jam too many books into already over stuffed luggage to the realities of life in the dusty and hot fields, the delicate dance of propitiating the ruling sheikhs, the sometimes seemingly inexplicable conflicts between local workers, the different personalities on the dig, and observing the attitudes towards women in contrast to British attitudes at the time, no detail is too small for Christie Mallowan's pen to capture. She shares crazy and unpredictable adventures as well as the every day domesticity of living in tents and in native homes. She writes of the archaeological practices of the day, some of which probably make modern archaeologists wince, and of the nerve-wracking practice of splitting finds between the country of origin and Britain. Her very real love and affection for the people and the place come through her casual, chatty narrative.

Christie Mallowan is very much a woman of her time in terms of her attitude toward to native people and some of her observations clearly come from a place where she is the vaguely paternalistic "civilized onlooker" as compared to their position of "noble savage." But her own self-deprecation helps to mitigate this for modern readers and most of her observations generally come off with an air of old-fashioned charm. She is, after all, writing about people, both European and Middle Eastern, who no longer exist as they are drawn here. Because of this vanished way of life, disappeared to both the reader and to Christie Mallowan equally, and perhaps because she herself didn't finish writing it until it was gone, there is a real feel of nostalgia for a simpler, bygone era in these pages. But the nostalgia is not the whole story; it's not even the majority of it. The majority is a fascinating look into the growing field of archaeology, the people who practiced it, and one remarkable wife who turned her pen to explaining it in a mostly lighthearted, funny, well-written book. When the reader turns the last page it is with true regret that there is not more time to be spent in the sandy, stifling heat and blinding sun of 1930s Syria in the delightful company of their witty dear friend Agatha Christie Mallowan.

Review: Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt

I can't tell you for sure the first time I read Natalie Babbitt's Tuck Everlasting. It couldn't have been when it first came out since I was just 4 years old but I know I found it at some point in my childhood. In fact, the copy on my shelves is from 1985 so that's probably when I read it. It left a profound impression on me. I have held onto my copy of it for so many years thinking one day my children would read it too.  But no matter how much tried to convince my own children to read it, there have been no takers so far. But I will keep trying even as they grow past the intended age of the audience because this is a beautiful and worthwhile book.

Ten, almost eleven, year old Winnie Foster lives in the first house on the road into town; the house is set apart and fenced off from the rest of the village and Winnie seems to echo this lonely difference. She is in the woods behind her house one day when she comes across seventeen year old Jesse Tuck and a bubbling spring that he won't allow her to drink from. In fact, her discovery of the spring is a terrible thing and when his mother Mae and older brother Miles appear, they feel they have no recourse but to take Winnie with them to their home a ways away, promising to return her the following day. Once they take her, they tell her the fantastical story of the spring. It has granted them eternal life, freezing them at the ages they were when they first drank from it eighty-seven years prior. At first Winnie thinks this is a wonderful and magical thing but as she gradually hears the stories of each of the kindly Tucks, she learns the sorrows and burdens that they live under as a result of that one thirsty day and she discovers that she herself, knowing the story of the spring, has a choice of whether to live a regular life, keeping the secret forever, or to do as Jesse asks her, to wait until she is old enough for him and then to drink of the spring herself.

There were some disturbing bits that I don't remember well from my first reading. Why the Tucks felt compelled to essentially kidnap Winnie and her moments of homesickness, fear, and despair either didn't register, were lost in the larger meaning of the book, or were just casually accepted as what needed to happen to move the plot along when I read it so long ago. Now as an adult, they were definitely more horrifying to me, snagging my attention in ways that they certainly didn't back then. The stranger who follows the Tucks is eminently more ominous than he was on my first reading. But the gorgeous writing and the beautiful thoughts behind the story also sharpened in this most recent reading. And Babbitt is a gorgeous writer. She manages to fully develop all of her characters in this not very long, mostly quiet, and introspective novel. There are just enough moments of action in the plot to balance out the gently imparted moral of the tale and the pervading sadness of the Tuck family's lives. The novel predates much of today's technology, and even the technology of the 70s when it was published, but there's a timeless, elegant feel to the story. I remember crying over the perfect ending so many years ago and, recognizing even more nuances now, I cried over it again at this reading. Poignant, richly imagined, and beautiful, this is one children's novel I will never give up.

Review: On the Rocks by Erin Duffy

Social media can be a wonderful thing. It keeps us connected to family and friends we might not otherwise see or hear from very often. It is an easy way to connect and to share, the good, the sad, and the ever day stuff of our lives. But it can have a darker side too. Thanks to social media, we know when we are the only ones not invited to the party or when we missed a really fun time. We have a tangible measure of who our friends really are. But it can be even worse than that. Thanks to the relationship status on platforms like Facebook, we can have our hearts broken in public. The main character in Erin Duffy's newest novel, On the Rocks, has this very thing happen to her.

Abby is trying on wedding dresses with her best friend Grace when Grace notices that Abby's fiance Ben has changed his relationship status to single. With one click of the mouse, her entire life changes, completely devastating her. Abby and Ben have been together for ten years. Their relationship is comfortable, in fact, Ben compares it to a comfy but tatty old sock you can't bring yourself to throw out. A work opportunity comes up for him, one that involves moving across the country, he takes a closer look at their spark-free relationship, and chooses to break things off before he leaves. But this decision comes out of the blue for Abby and she crumbles. She holes up in her apartment, watching tv, binging on ice cream, and wearing sweats. She's turned into a cliche. She also has to try and pull herself together to pretend pleasure for his younger sister's engagement and the run up to that wedding, which is unlikely to be cancelled, like her own was. Finally Grace has had enough and convinces Abby that she needs a change of scenery. As a kindergarten teacher, Abby's summers are free so she and Grace can rent a place in Newport Beach and try to break Abby out of her depression. The summer can also give Grace time to examine the future of her own relationship, an affair with a married colleague.

Although Abby's not so sure she can get back into the dating world and just be Abby instead of being Abby and Ben (after all, she's still responding to Ben's texts to her), she agrees to try. With the help of a former classmate of Grace's, a currently unemployed smart alecky lawyer named Bobby, who offers to be her wingman, and his friend Wolf, a German caddy wanting to perfect his English, Abby might dip a toe back in the single girl pool. But once bitten, twice shy, and she's not going to do it with her technology intact, deleting her Facebook account. Abby has some truly hilarious attempts at dating but more importantly, she works on accepting friendships, with Bobby and Wolf as well as with Lara, the seemingly perfect woman whose shop she ends up working in and who went to her high school.

The cover of this novel throws it firmly in the chick lit firmament but unlike many chick lit novels, finding a man will not make Abby whole or more complete. The novel is more firmly focused on the power and value of friendship and support than romantic love despite everyone urging Abby to date all the time. Abby is alternately vulnerable and a pain in the ass as she works through the death of her relationship and she comes to the knowledge that Ben wasn't wrong about the state of them and that she deserves to have more than just a comfortable and familiar, spark-free relationship. Bobby and Wolf are great supporting characters, adding levity to the story and calling Abby out on her moods. Grace has her own issues, the married boyfriend, which ultimately show Abby that she has to do more than mope about her own situation and be present for her friend. Having to come to terms with her younger sister's wedding and happiness, as well as recognizing and empathizing with Lara's deep despair are just two more ways that Abby's selfish self-absorption are challenged over her summer of healing. There is a lot of levity in the writing and the tone stays generally light and breezy. This is a quick read about the value of friendship with just enough quirky characters to balance out the inevitable heartbreaks. It may not stay with you long past closing the book but it's fun and frothy enough to be a perfect read when you have your toes buried in the sand and the sun shining overhead.

Thanks to LibraryThing Early Reviewers and the publisher for sending me a copy of this book to review.

Review: Dietland by Sarai Walker

The weight loss industry as a whole in the US rakes in roughly 60 billion dollars annually. With fully one third of Americans qualifying as obese, many of those paying into this vast industry are women. They are searching for a thinner, healthier life. But they are also searching for acceptance, visibility, and a release from the shame and humiliation of being fat in our thin obsessed culture. Just as the real women paying into the diet industry, Plum Kettle, in Sarai Walker's subversive, thoughtful novel, Dietland, is also searching for the thin woman inside her, the real life she's supposed to live, and ultimately an appreciation for herself.

As the assistant to the editor of a teen magazine, Plum writes off the record advice letters to young girls and teens who are suffering from a variety of problems and who are all clearly hurting emotionally. Plum got this job because she was supposed to have good insight into the angst suffered by these girls. After all, Plum is, to her eternal shame, fat. In fact, she's more than 300 pounds and works from home so that her boss Kitty doesn't have to see her everyday, this gross anomaly in the rake thin world of fashion. But Kitty isn't the only one who looks away from Plum, Plum herself wants to look away. She knows that people in public stare at her and make rude, hurtful comments, that she does not fit the societal construct of beauty or even just of normal and she's internalized these values too. After a lifetime in the clutches off the weight loss industry, having tried every diet out there, Plum is determined to have bariatric surgery. She knows that there is a thin woman named Alicia (Plum's real name) inside her just waiting to come out and start living her life instead of continuing in this overweight and unhappy holding pattern.

Just one month out from her much anticipated surgery, Plum notices she's being followed. Normally timid and self-effacing, Plum confronts the young woman who is stalking her, a move that will lead her to a fundamental change in her entire world view. Given a copy by Leeta, the young woman who oserved her for so long, she reads a book, Adventures in Dietland, an expose of a harsh and restrictive diet plan which Plum followed when she was younger, written by the daughter of the diet's founder. Then she gets to meet Verena Baptist, the author, and is welcomed into Calliope House, the home that Verena runs, a place where women can be true to themselves and to their feminist goals. Concurrently with Plum's gradual awakening to her own potential and to an acceptance of her body as it is, the media jumps on a gruesome story. Two men who went free, their brutal crimes against a young military woman officially brushed under the rug, are discovered murdered, stuffed in sacks, and dumped off a highway bridge. Each of them has a piece of paper with the name Jennifer written on it and stuffed down his throat. As Plum transforms herself mentally and emotionally, more gruesome acts of violence, retaliations against men and other exploiters of women, with responsibility claimed by the person or persons behind Jennifer, occur. On a grand scale, with these attacks, society scrambles to stop objectifying and blaming women while on a smaller scale, Plum stops accepting the fat-shaming and invisibility that has always been her lot.

The ills that Jennifer, the generic name of everywoman, wants to rectify are larger than Plum's but even her negative body image is a small piece of those ills; it is symptomatic of an image obsessed, patriarchal privileged society. Walker is clearly making a point here with an initially powerless main character taking over her own life, living on her own terms, and becoming empowered, and with a guerrilla group demanding justice for women. The two plot lines start off mostly unrelated but come together in ways both anticipated and unexpected and they mostly work together although the guerrilla plot line with its bigger, more encompassing issues, takes something away from Plum's more personal struggles, trivializing them to a degree. Plum's character changes substantially between the first and second parts as well. Jennifer's tactics start to be over the top unbelievable and Plum too goes beyond decent human being-hood to being constantly angry and antagonistic. The ending is a bizarre one but perhaps in keeping with the fantastical psychological warfare of the previous 300 pages. The novel is definitely uncomfortable, disturbing, and directly confrontational, and some readers will be uncomfortable with the militancy of some of the characters' actions but it is wonderfully discussable with issues of societal norms, unrealistic media portrayals of women, the commodifying of the female body, self-esteem and what drives self-worth, the ubiquity of dieting and the continued profitability of the diet industry, and the need to be something appealing, sexy, enviable, something less than real.

Waiting on Wednesday

This meme is hosted by Breaking the Spine and is meant to highlight some great pre-publication books we all can't wait to get our grubby little mitts on.

Like Family by Paolo Giordano. The book is being released by Pamela Dorman Books on December 1, 2015.

Amazon says this about the book: From the author of the international bestseller The Solitude of Prime Numbers, an exquisite portrait of marriage, adulthood, and the meaning of family

Paolo Giordano’s prizewinning debut novel, The Solitude of Prime Numbers, catapulted the young Italian author into the literary spotlight. His new novel features his trademark character-driven narrative and intimate domestic setting that first made him an international sensation.

When Signora A first enters the narrator’s home, his wife, Nora, is experiencing a difficult pregnancy. First as their maid and nanny, then their confidante, this older woman begins to help her employers negotiate married life, quickly becoming the glue in their small household. She is the steady, maternal influence for both husband and wife, and their son, Emanuele, whom she protects from his parents’ expectations and disappointments. But the family’s delicate fabric comes undone when Signora A is diagnosed with cancer. Moving seamlessly between the past and present, Giordano highlights with remarkable precision the joy of youth and the fleeting nature of time. An elegiac, heartrending, and deeply personal portrait of marriage and the people we choose to call family, this is a jewel of a novel—short, intense, and unforgettable.

Review: Beautiful Affliction by Lene Fogelberg

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Have you ever gone to the doctor for something and been dismissed only to later feel vindicated when something was in fact wrong with you? What if you were dismissed for years, despite knowing deep in your bones, that something was not right? Lene Fogelberg knew that she was dying but not one doctor in her native Sweden agreed with her. In fact, she was labeled a hypochondriac, ignored, and finally denied medical leave because no one even thought to truly examine her. And yet she was right; she was in fact dying of a congenital heart disease. Beautiful Affliction is her memoir, of life undiagnosed and of the two open heart surgeries that saved her just in time.

When Lene was small, a doctor listened to her heart and declared that she had a harmless heart murmur, nothing to worry about. Neither her parents nor she saw any reason to disagree with this diagnosis. But despite the all clear on her health, she had strange unexplainable symptoms that increased as she got older. She was cold a lot, always exhausted, and felt like she was having trouble breathing, but if these were constants in her life, they were unremarkable for the most part and she just lived her life as best as she could. Lene met Anders when she was only twelve and he was fourteen. They were a couple from then on, marrying young and eventually going on to have two daughters. Lene suffered terribly following each pregnancy, uncertain why pregnancy and childbirth took such a toll on her. Although she mainly ignored the state of her health, having been told time and again that nothing was wrong with her, Lene never believed doctors, always certain that there was a monster inside her just waiting to be exposed. When Anders was transferred to the US, Lene did her best to make the move a smooth one for him and their small daughters despite her overwhelming and constant weariness. In order to get a driver's license she had to submit to a physical and it was through this that her heart murmur, alarming in its magnitude, was discovered. Lene had an abnormal aortic valve, one so constricted that each doctor she saw was amazed by the fact that she was still upright. She needed immediate open heart surgery to save her life.

The memoir starts out with the Fogelbergs' move to Philadelphia and what leads up to Lene's diagnosis alternating with chapters of pieces from Lene's past and childhood, her early years with Anders, the agonizing difficulties of her her pregnancies, and the complete, constant dismissals by the Swedish medical professionals whenever she tries to uncover the riddle of what is wrong with her. The different chapters are formatted differently, with the past being all italicized while the current day moving forward chapters are all in regular font, a questionable editorial decision.  If only a formatting decision marks the difference between the chapters for the reader, the memoir should be narrated differently.

In both time periods of the memoir, Fogelberg's regret for her inability to do everything she thinks she should be able to do and her desire for forgiveness for her perceived weaknesses shines through. She is not only physically affected by this hidden disease but she is emotionally gutted by the visible results of it. Her struggle is heart felt and painful to read and she allows the reader a very intimate insight into her very deepest fears and hopes. She is terrified of leaving her small daughters motherless and is filled with sorrow at the thought of leaving Anders long before either of them are ready. The continual repetition of how she's feeling and her symptoms beats a steady and unchanging refrain, like the constant beating of her diseased heart. Fogelberg is a poet and her language is indeed very poetic, metaphorical, and vivid. The calcified valve is discovered about midway through the memoir and after that point, the confusion and rush of an impending major surgery takes over as Fogelberg writes in short, almost disjointed snippets reflecting her own jagged mental state. Only when her survival is assured does the writing steady out again. And only after all is said and done and the memoir's final page has been read does she take to task Sweden's socialized medicine and the way that it almost fatally failed her. Fogelberg offers this lyrical memoir as a testament to miracles, to the fragility of life, to the importance of intuition, and to the power of love and support.

Thanks to the publisher and Book Sparks PR for sending me a copy of the book to review.

Review: Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher

It's hard to be funny. Sense of humor is such a personal thing and what tickles one person's funny bone will leave another one cold. But I think everyone can agree that the depths of bureaucracy is ripe for entertainment; it's either laugh at the absurdity or cry. Julie Schumacher's slight but delightful epistolary novel, Dear Committee Members, the winner of the 2015 Thurber Prize for American Humor, set in one of the most bureaucratic places you can find outside of government itself, academia, is truly humorous and if you don't find it funny, well, there may not be hope for you.

Jason Fitger is an English and Creative Writing professor at a small liberal arts college in Minnesota. He's written four increasingly poorly received novels, both his marriage and his affair have ended badly, and he's alienated most everyone who used to have some sympathy for him. He's cantankerous and crotchety but he's still being asked to write letters of recommendation and reference for students, fellow faculty members, and others in his life. His letters and emails illuminate his own life, relationships, and frustrations as well as, if not better than, the lives of those he's meant to be recommending. In these letters, he vents his passive aggressive outrage at the worlds of academia and writing. He comes across as truly unconscious of his effect on women and baffled by their reactions to his and his narcissistic sexism. The letters are full of personal digressions and petty complaints about the state of the English department and its relative importance on campus; they rail against bureaucracy and lament his failed marriage. He is pompous and pretentious as only spurned and unsuccessful college professors can be. He's refreshingly honest about the capabilities of the subjects of his letters, or at least their capabilities in his eyes, and brutal about his opinions of the jobs for which they are applying. The letters are addressed to a wide variety of recipients within Payne University as well as outside of the collegiate world.  One can only imagine the horror and magic of receiving one of Fitger's letters.

As terrifyingly awful as he and his letters sound (and he is nothing if not prickly and sarcastic), the novel is hilarious. As the school year progresses, his letters become more expansive and increasingly honest. It is clear that they are unintentionally funny and Schumacher does a brilliant job drawing Fitger as completely oblivious to this embedded humor. She's captured the absurdity of academia, the weariness of feeling unappreciated, and the sheer determination to remain relevant and to continue to champion his favorites in this obdurate and opinionated character. He may be a miserable and small human being but he's got a dry wit and he's not going to fade into tweedy obscurity quietly. The crowning achievement of this wonderful, often spot on, satire is the fact that Fitger so long a character of derision for the reader, becomes wholly human, sympathetic, and finally able to look outside of himself at others by the end of the tale. His renewed appreciation for the people around him and life with all its attendant annoyances is nothing short of miraculous. Intelligent entertainment, a skewering of academia, and full of outsized snark, this was a pure pleasure to read.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This meme is hosted by Kathryn at Reading Date.

Books I completed this past week are:

Come, Tell Me How You Live by Agatha Christie Mallowan
Dietland by Sarai Walker
Beautiful Affliction by Lene Fogelberg

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

The Resurrectionist by Jack O'Connell
The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford
Be Safe I Love You by Cara Hoffman

Reviews posted this week:

Life and Other Near-Death Experiences by Camille Pagan
Rooville by Julie Long
Love Maps by Eliza Factor
Without You, There Is No Us by Suki Kim

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews
Migratory Animals by Mary Helen Specht
Balm by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
Secrets of a Charmed Life by Susan Meissner
Girl in Glass by Deanna Fei
Orphan Number Eight by Kim van Alkemade
Make Your Home Among Strangers by Jennine Capo Crucet
The Seven Stages of Anger and Other Stories by Wendy J. Fox
The Door by Magda Szabo
Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper
Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg
Landfall by Ellen Urbani
This Must Be the Place by Kate Racculia
Henna House by Nomi Eve
The Coincidence of Coconut Cake by Amy Reichert
Bread Alone by Judith Ryan Hendricks
Fishbowl by Bradley Somer
The Woman in the Photograph by Dana Gynther
Beneath the Bonfire by Nickolas Butler
The Baker's Apprentice by Judith Ryan Hendricks
X Marks the Scot by Victoria Roberts
Miss Dreamsville and the Lost Heiress of Collier County by Amy Hill Hearth
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller
The Bees by Laline Paull
A Peach of a Pair by Kim Boykin
Welcome to Braggsville by T. Geronimo Johnson
Wonder by R. J. Palacio
Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt
The Sea Keeper's Daughter by Lisa Wingate
My Unsentimental Education by Debra Monroe
Minerva by M.C. Beaton
What Is Visible by Kimberly Elkins
Katherine Carlyle by Rupert Thomson
Two Dogs and a Parrot by Joan Chittister
The Last Season by Stuart Stevens
Mrs. Sinclair's Suitcase by Louise Walters
Forever Your Earl by Eva Leigh
Speed Kings by Andy Bull
Slightly Foxed, The Real Reader's Quarterly #46 edited by Gail Pirkis and Hazel Wood
We That Are Left by Clare Clark
Famous Baby by Karen Rizzo
Dear Mr. You by Mary-Louise Parker
Come, Tell Me How You Live by Agatha Christie Mallowan

Monday Mailbox

I had a surprisingly busy mailbox again this week.  Not that I'm complaining!  I'd never complain about something so wonderful.  This past week's mailbox arrivals:

Beautiful Affliction by Lene Fogelberg came from Book Sparks PR for a blog tour.

A memoir about a woman who is convinced she's dying but can't get doctors to believe her is finally diagnosed in the last stages of fatal congenital heart disease, this sounds terrifying and amazing all at once.

Clutch by Lisa Becker came from me for me.

Chick lit that uses types of purses to describe men? This sounds like pure, unadulterated fun.

Mr. Putter and Tabby Turn the Pages by Cynthia Rylant and Arthur Howard came from me for me.

If you have little people in the house, you must read Mr. Putter and Tabby. Even if you don't, you'll be charmed. When I figured out what this slight padded envelope contained, my 13 year old son and 17 year old daughter fought each other to get to read it first. (I really, really, really wanted to be first but I was being the grown-up.  Sometimes it stinks to be the grown-up.)

Whistling Women by Kelly Romo came from TLC Book Tours for a blog tour.

Estranged sisters, secrets, the World's Fair, a nudist colony. What else could one want in a novel?

The Things We Keep by Sally Hepworth came from St. Martin's Press.

A novel about the only two young inhabitants of an assisted living center falling in love and then being separated, this sounds poignant and beautiful.

If you want to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

Sunday Salon: Non-Fiction November

As you might have noticed from my post last Tuesday, this month is Non-Fiction November. That initial post looked at my past non-fiction habits but it didn't cover what I hope to read this month. Of course, unlike several people participating, I am not devoting my entire month to reading non-fiction. I'm just trying to up the percentage and so far I've done that in spades, having finished 2 non-fiction works (Come, Tell Me How You Live by Agatha Christie Mallowan and Beautiful Affliction by Lene Fogelberg) to only 1 novel. Of course, I have 3 novels currently on the go and zero non-fiction titles though. So rather than slip back into my usual habits, I thought I'd create a list of books I am hoping to get to this month, keeping in mind there's not only Thanksgiving to host but our enormous Saturday after Thanksgiving party as well. Cooking for these eats up a good week's worth of spare time although I will certainly be current on all my podcasts! I do have other novels to read for review as well so my reading time is not all my own either.  I've committed to driving for a field trip and signed myself up for an intense 6 days a week exercise class in hopes of not gaining any weight this holiday season.  So I'll be rather busy outside of reading too.  In any case, in addition to the two already finished, I am hoping to sneak in at least 4 more non-fiction reads:

1. A Walk Across America by Peter Jenkins
2. The Nurses by Alexandra Robbins
3. Are You Fully Charged by Tom Rath
4. If You Find This Letter by Hannah Brencher

If I find myself with any extra, unscheduled reading time, are there any other non-fiction books I absolutely *must* read?

My reading travels this week took me in some very different directions. I went to the Middle East (Syria) on an archaeological dig with a famous mystery writer and her archaeologist husband in the 1930s. I was in New York with a woman learning to love herself no matter what size she is and watching as a vigilant group murdered men who abused, raped, or exploited women. I moved from Sweden to the US as a young mother finally had her congenital heart disease diagnosed just in time to save her life. I am still at the medical clinic with a father hoping to have his son "resurrected." I am also still entrenched in upper class Britain between the wars with a family modeled after the Mitfords. And I have just returned home from a tour of duty with a woman who looks like she's holding it together but has terrible potential swimming just under the surface. Where have your bookish travels taken you this past week?

Review: Without You, There Is No Us by Suki Kim

We know so little about North Korea that it can loom quite large in imagination. And what little we do know does not recommend it to us. We have trouble envisioning a society so secretive and closed. We find it hard to imagine an unthinking reverence for our leader. We cannot imagine being so removed from the rest of the world as to have no knowledge at all of scientific advances, popular culture, or world events. In this day and age of instant access to information, we have very little insight into a population and a country where these very things are true.  We shudder at the thought of such a dictatorship, finding it something out of dystopian fictions like 1984.  However, Suki Kim, a journalist and author, had access to this society for a brief moment in time when she went to North Korea for several months and taught English to the sons of the North Korean elite. This book is her memoir of her time there.

Suki Kim grew up in South Korea and like so many others there, had a family member disappear forever when North and South Korea were partitioned. This family history, paired with a couple of sanctioned trips to North Korea, made Kim want to see underneath the scant images we have of the country, past the carefully orchestrated and controlled visits she was allowed to make, beyond the caricature of an inexplicable leader so often poked fun at in the media. So she applied to be a teacher at Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, a school founded by Christian missionaries, closely monitored by the government, educating the sons of the elite, and the only university allowed to remain open in 2011. She was accepted to teach English there despite the fact that she is not only a journalist but also an atheist. And so started her several months, two semesters worth, of living in the wholly controlling country of North Korea.

Her experience there was one of constraint. She had to keep notes secretly; her emails were censored and mail was read. The university "minders" kept the teachers under constant surveillance and Kim felt a crushing isolation, a fear of reprisals, and a paranoia that made it depressing and lonely to live there. She came to care deeply for her students but was afraid to connect with them on much more than a very superficial level in case they are punished or she tells them of things they are not supposed to know which make them yearn for more. She had try to teach her English classes without reference to the outside world, a world her students have been taught to despise, and her curriculum must be doubly approved, both by the government minders and by the evangelicals running the school. And if that wasn't challenging enough, she had little to no contact with family and friends outside of Korea to help her through the times of despair.

While there, Kim had a first hand view of the real reverence in which the North Koreans held Kim Jong-il. She saw the ways in which group mentality was taught and maintained in the boys, extinguishing any sense of individuality and instilling total devotion to the regime. She herself blurs her students and her interactions with her students together, a necessary protection for them but one which left them reading as flat and stock rather than real boys. But perhaps even she didn't know them either, despite living there there was no knowing the people, no escaping the ever present propaganda, no seeing that which the government didn't want an outsider to see. Since it was too dangerous for Kim to really have honest discussions with her students and her own movements and understanding of North Korea were so orchestrated by the regime, she had to return over and over again in the memoir to her own feeling of claustrophobia at the school and sadness for young men who were so brainwashed and ignorant of the outside world. As such, the memoir doesn't really pull the curtain on this secretive country even though Kim clearly wants to. The story is alternately both personal and a journalistic investigation but Kim's worries and stories about her personal life at home merge uneasily with her stated purpose in being in PDRK. The underlying topic was fascinating but the book itself was a bit repetitious.

Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy of this book for review.

Review: Love Maps by Eliza Factor

There are many different types of love: familial, romantic, and parental to name but a few. To love someone is to go on a journey with them. You can see where you have been together but you can never know where the journey leads, what terrain you may pass through, how long you will journey together, or where your ultimate destination, whether together or separate, is. Each of us has our own unique love map, imprinted on our hearts, that tells the story of who we are and how we've loved. In Eliza Factor's novel, Love Maps, main character Sarah Marker, an artist, paints actual love maps for people based on the stories they tell her, but even the artist can't know the as yet uncharted places on her own map.

When the story opens, Sarah finds a letter from Philip, the father of her seven year old son Max. She and Philip are estranged and she never told him that he had a child. Now it looks like he's about to reappear in her comfortable life. Quickly the narrative flips back more than 15 years to the time just prior to Sarah and Philip's meeting, when she is determined to go to the funeral of an old family friend. Maya, Sarah's older sister,a successful businesswoman and former singing sensation who has an outsized presence in Sarah's life thinks that Sarah should not go. But Sarah feels she must. And that one decision leads to so many others that change the trajectory of her life forever.

Alternating between the art scene in New York in the 1980s and suburbia in the late 1990s, the dual story lines flip back and forth in short chapter bursts. The past unfolds the sisterly, almost proprietary, relationship between Sarah and Maya, the advent of Philip and Sarah's growing feelings for him, and the way that these two competing relationships tug and tear at her. Maya is a character that inspires her sister's hypnotic devotion and she keeps Sarah firmly in her orbit by holding her selfishly tight, demanding her own way. Sarah can stretch this bond to allow for Philip's presence in her life, but she can't or won't break it. As her life gets more complicated and fraught, her art and talent are finding expression in her paintings in a world ready to appreciate them. Sarah is a seemingly free spirited character who is nevertheless tied to her past and the expectation of always suiting her sister, even to the exclusion of the man she loves. But she learns the hard way that being placatory to everyone doesn't work. Her fear of the past is clear in her reactions to hearing that Philip plans to arrive on her doorstep a mere day away and she must reflect on her journey to where she is as she anticipates the upheaval his reappearance would surely cause. The question is whether she will have the courage to allow him to reappear.  Philip's character is much more opaque, driven as it is by his love for Sarah and his uncanny dislike for and refusal to be  charmed by Maya.

The novel is quite slow to start and almost immediately a barrage of characters comes at the reader from two different time periods, complicating the reading. But once the story settles into the two plot lines, the reading gets easier. The writing is intelligent and well done although certain of the characters are undeniably unlikable. Because of the brevity of the novel, some of the relationships and motivations have to just be accepted instead of feeling organically true. As a story of love and relationship, the novel is quite interesting as it reflects the symbolism of Sarah's Love Map paintings, showing the reader where Sarah has been but not showing, not knowing, where she'll go. It is ultimately as unresolved as life but it is also an incisive, if frustrating, look at relationship, a brief glimpse into the art world, and a reflection on mistakes and how to acknowledge and grow past them.

Thanks to LibraryThing Early Reviewers for sending me a copy of this book for review.

Review: Rooville by Julie Long

Some people live in one place their whole lives. Others of us are more nomadic, making homes all over the country or the world. For people in the latter group, there is almost always a place that stands out in memory as the place they'd want to go back to someday. That place might be the place they grew up, had a particularly wonderful stretch of years, or close friends or dear family nearby. In Julie Long's quirky novel, Rooville, main character Owen Martin wants to go back to the small Midwestern town his family founded and where he grew up happy and settled until the untimely death of his father.

Thomas Wolfe's famous adage about not going home again reminds us all that the place of our memory is long since changed, as are we ourselves. When adult Owen, a television meteorologist in California, commits the unthinkable act of showing his viewing audience weather elsewhere, where it's not perpetually 75 and sunny, he loses his job. He's only momentarily regretful about the job though and when he hears that his aunt and uncle might just sell the family farm because it will otherwise sit empty, he sees it as a golden opportunity to head home to the place his heart is anyway: Martinsville, Iowa. He longs for that sense of belonging he's always missed in California, the nice Midwestern values he was raised with, comfort food, basketball, and, yes, real weather. But when he gets back to Martinsville, he discovers that it is not the sleepy little farming hamlet he remembers. In the intervening years, it's become the US headquarters for the transcendental meditation movement. The diner he was so looking forward to visiting has been replaced by a vegan restaurant. The local university lost its accreditation and was bought by the late Maharishi to teach his principles to his adherents. Meditation and yoga and other New Age practices abound. Stores have all been redesigned so that people have to enter from the east, even if that means entering through an alley rather than a former front door. And the new residents and the old residents are not co-existing with each other as well as might be hoped. The town is split along "Regular" and "Roo" (short for guru) lines.

Owen is fairly unhappy with his discoveries about the town but he's about to get caught firmly in the middle of it all. He is leery of the "meditating mayor" but is attracted to Trishna, the mayor's daughter, an ardent meditator herself. He agrees to coach the Maharishi High girls basketball team after their coach can't finish out the season. He loves basketball but has to come up with alternate ways to coach and relate to these girls; they have such a different mindset from Owen. When he puts aside his prejudices about the meditating town folk and his skeptical views of their practices, he learns to connect with the girls as individuals and as a team. But this knowledge of connection and understanding is unfotunately easily lost to him as he tries to find a way to forge a relationship with Trishna but then discovers that her father plans to buy the Martin farm, his personal heritage, and turn it into a meditation amusement park.

Owen feels the pull of his past and of small town life, not stopping to think to the future and how change can sometimes be a better, albeit scary, thing, a wonderful opportunity never before thought of. He is busy trying to fulfill what he assumes would be his late father's wishes without reference to what makes Owen himself happy and or what does the most good for others. It is only in compromising and learning to accept difference that Owen will find happiness, open himself to love, and truly feel like he's found his home, changed though it might be. The story as a whole is a little bit wacky (although the town is in fact based on a real place) and the ending is a little preposterous and over the top (then again, the reader sort of it expects it by the end) but in general it's sweet and kooky and it has a wonderful farting English bulldog, Stella, in it. Long has done a good job showing the extremes that breed fear, rejection, and divisiveness and of the ways in which a little attempt at understanding can make such a mutually beneficial difference. This is an amusing and fast-paced novel that reminds you that you can't go home again but that might be the best thing after all if it helps you to grow, accept change, and learn new and different things.

Thanks to the publisher and Book Sparks PR for sending me a copy of the book to review.